Communication utilizing messages has provided a wide range of increased functionality to users of computing devices, such as desktop computers, wireless phones, and so on. For example, users may communicate, one to another, through the use of email (i.e., electronic mail). Email employs standards and conventions for addressing and routing such that the email may be delivered across a network, such as the Internet, utilizing a plurality of devices. In this way, emails may be transferred within a company over an intranet, across the world using the Internet, and so on.
The use of email has provided a number of advantages to the user. For example, even though email may be communicated almost instantaneously, email can be dealt with according to the recipient's own schedule, such as when the email is received to provide an immediate response, at a later time when the user has sufficient resources to answer the message, and so on. Additionally, email may allow the user to prioritize messages, such as when to respond to one or more particular emails that were received by the user. Because of these and other advantages, the prevalence of email has continued to expand such that email is now considered an indispensable part of everyday life, both at home and during a typical business day.
In another example, users may communicate, one to another, through the use of instant messaging. For instance, when two users are online at the same time, instant messages may be exchanged in real time between the two users. In this way, the instant messages may be utilized to support a text conversation between the two users in a manner that mimics how the two users would participate in a typical spoken conversation.
Unfortunately, as the prevalence of these techniques for sending messaging has continued to expand, the amount of “spam” encountered by the user has also continued to increase. Spam is typically thought of as an email that is sent to a large number of recipients, such as to promote a product or service. Because sending an email generally costs the sender little or nothing to send, “spammers” have developed which send the equivalent of junk mail to as many users as can be located. Even though a minute fraction of the recipients may actually desire the described product or service, this minute fraction may be enough to offset the minimal costs in sending the spam. Consequently, a vast number of spammers are responsible for communicating a vast number of unwanted and irrelevant emails. Thus, a typical user may receive a large number of these irrelevant emails, thereby hindering the user's interaction with relevant emails. In some instances, for example, the user may be required to spend a significant amount of time interacting with each of the unwanted emails in order to determine which, if any, of the emails received by the user might actually be of interest.
Therefore, there is a continuing need for techniques that may be employed to limit unwanted messages which are communicated over a network.